Second Thoughts On Guzman?

Buried in Baseball Prospectus' San Francisco comments is a chart of Free Agent short stops by WARP--one of their head-scratching stats that attempts to tell how many wins a player is above the kinds of stiffs that typically man Bowden's benches.

           Age  Team  VORP  WARP3

Vizquel     38  CLE   35.5   6.2   Signed SFN

Guzman      27  MIN   14.8   5.7   Signed MON

Valentin    35  CHA   17.0   5.0

Counsell    34  MIL    5.8   4.5

Renteria    29  STL   26.5   3.8

Larkin      41  CIN   23.1   3.6

Cruz        32  SFN   19.3   3.5   Signed SFN

Cabrera     30  BOS   13.7   3.3

Garciaparra 31  CHN   29.7   3.0

Clayton     35  COL   20.4   2.8

Perez       31  CHN   -0.2   2.3   Signed CHN

Aurilia     33  SDN    5.8   2.2

Vizcaino    37  HOU    6.5   2.1

Gomez       33  TOR    7.3   1.4

Martinez    32  CHN    2.8   1.8

Reese       31  BOS   -8.1   1.2

Gonzalez    31  SDN   -3.6   0.5

Wilson      31  NYY   -7.9  -0.2

Flying in the face of their stats, they conclude:

If we factor in defense via Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP3) because it's such a crucial part of their value, there's at least a glimmer of logic which emerges regarding the Vizquel and Cristian Guzman signings, as they were literally the most valuable shortstops on the market according to 2004 metrics. Of course, that's because Edgar Renteria (9.4 WARP in 2003) , Nomar Garciaparra (7.9 in '03) and Orlando Cabrera (7.0 in '03) had comparatively mediocre seasons by their high standards. On this side of the looking glass, the latter trio are still a better bet to outperform the signed duo. And yes, Enrique Wilson is on that list merely for laughs.

They're completely ignoring the age and decline of those three short stops--something they'd ordinarily be all over.

Yes, Guzman's contract is for a year too long and probably a little too much money, but you can't conveniently ignore the statistics when you don't like what they say.